# Affliction

Affliction encompasses all human suffering—illness, grief, loss, and the rigors of life. Mormon transhumanists view it as a divine call to compassionate work.

[Image: Suffering is an inescapable part of reality. No one is immune to illness, loss, persecution, grief, and opposition.]

Affliction encompasses all of human suffering: illness, loss, persecution, grief, and the daily toll of living in a world that is not yet what it should be. Christian traditions have offered many accounts of suffering, including appeals to providence, freedom, soul-making, and the limits of human understanding. Latter-day Saint scripture, however, introduces a strikingly different perspective: Enoch sees God weep over the violence and misery of creation and asks how a holy God can grieve (Moses 7:28–29). Here, God is not an insulated sovereign untouched by human agony, but an empathetic Creator deeply anguished by the destructive choices of His children.

Yet, this divine grief is not an indication of helplessness; rather, it reveals a cosmic commitment to redemption. Because God feels the profound, staggering weight of human tragedy, He is intimately invested in its ultimate resolution. The weeping God is also the healing God. This perspective assures the sufferer that their pain is fully seen and understood by a Creator whose empathy drives the eventual, complete repair of a broken world.

## Filling Up What Is Lacking

[Image: While suffering itself is not a virtue, the staggering weight of difficult experiences can reveal a depth of character we didn't realize we possessed.]

Paul’s letter to the Colossians contains one of the most provocative claims in the New Testament: “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). The claim is startling, but it need not mean that Christ’s atoning sacrifice was deficient. Latter-day Saint scripture describes that sacrifice as infinite and eternal—something human blood cannot supply (Alma 34:10–14). What remains unfinished is the historical work of reconciliation: every instance of unrelieved suffering, every injustice not yet repaired, communities still divided, and neighbors still awaiting care.

At its core, the atonement is participatory. No one receives it passively. Disciples are called to join the work of reconciliation, even when it's inconvenient. The afflictions of Christ are, in some sense, the afflictions that remain in the world—every instance of unrelieved suffering, every injustice not yet repaired. The ultimate response to theodicy is not to quietly accept a broken world, but to partner with an empathetic God in alleviating suffering. The theological demand is to enter that space, not to retreat from it.

> And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel. I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

## **Liberty Jail and the Pedagogy of Endurance**

[Image: The Liberty Jail revelations were written under extremely difficult circumstances, and they describe a God who is well acquainted with suffering.]

When Joseph Smith was imprisoned in Liberty Jail in the winter of 1838-1839, he wrote some of the most luminous passages in Latter-day Saint scripture. The context was grim: a cold and filthy cell, false accusations, separation from family, and the near-destruction of the community he had built. From within that suffering, Joseph received revelation that described a God who empathized with his plight because He once “descended below” all things in order to “comprehend all things”. 

Expanding on this empathetic view of suffering, Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians offers this reassurance: our present afflictions are but a fleeting shadow compared to the unfathomable weight of glory that awaits the faithful (2 Corinthians 4:17). Ultimately, the implication across these teachings is that affliction, navigated rightly, produces a kind of knowledge that comfort cannot; adversity is real, but it isn't the whole story, and it need not have the last word.

## **The Technical Work of Overcoming**

Religious traditions consistently mandate healing the sick, caring for the vulnerable, and elevating the human condition. Historically, humanity possessed limited tools to fulfill these divine injunctions—basic agriculture, rudimentary medicine, and so forth. Today, Mormon Transhumanists regard scientific knowledge and technological power as among the primary means through which humanity may work toward prophetic visions of healing, immortality, and renewed embodiment. In this view, biotechnology and advanced medicine are not replacements for faith, but contemporary vehicles for realizing ancient directives. To heal the sick is to do what Jesus commanded. The scientific quest to defeat death is, in essence, an attempt to realize what the resurrection already promises. To reduce the burden of mental illness, chronic pain, or genetic disease is to fill up, in some small measure, what is still lacking in the afflictions of Christ.

The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation seeks the flourishing of persons and their anatomies according to their own wills, desires, and laws, insofar as they are not oppressive. That commitment rules out coercive enhancement and cures imposed without meaningful consent. It also requires researchers, clinicians, engineers, and policymakers to share design authority with the people who will live with a technology’s consequences. 

Technology pursued without compassion produces its own set of problems. History offers no shortage of examples: enhancement for the few that deepens the suffering of the many, efficiency gained at the cost of dignity, cures weaponized as tools of control. That's the real test for any technology: does it actually reduce suffering or does it just move the suffering somewhere less visible?

*See also*: [Disease](/topical-guide/disease), [Endure](/topical-guide/endure), [Faith](/topical-guide/faith), [Heal](/topical-guide/heal), [Mercy](/topical-guide/mercy), [Oppression](/topical-guide/oppression), [Relief](/topical-guide/relief), [Sickness](/topical-guide/sickness), [Suffering](/topical-guide/suffering), [Theodicy](/topical-guide/theodicy)